SenateData is a package designed to allow a user with only basic knowledge of R interact with SenateData, a dataset with over 1000 variables that compiles information about all US Senators and state-years across 1789-2025, and its codebook. The dataset tracks state characteristics, Senators, and the behavior of those Senators in policymaking. Users can find variables related to state- and member-level demographics, politics, and policy; subset the data across multiple dimensions; create custom aggregations of the dataset; and access citations in both plain text and BibTeX for every variable.
SenateData is a functional package that interacts with the
SenateData dataset via the internet. Install the package from GitHub
like so:
# use the devtools library to download the package from GitHub
library(devtools)
# if there are issues or you only want to download SenateData
install_github("ippsr/SenateData")In addition to citing each variable’s source, we ask that you cite SenateData if you use this package or the dataset:
Yoel, Benjamin, and Iliya Liampert. 2026. SenateData Project. V.1.2. IPPSR.
Benjamin Yoel - PhD Candidate, Michigan State University, and Predoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University
Iliya Liampert - PhD Student, Michigan State University